had to fight to get him into
the stone, and the patterns were not set straight in that terminal. You
must send one of the Little Ones to set them to rights. Toymaker, you
are not listening to me."

"Stop chattering, Miellyn," said Evarin indifferently. "You brought him
here, and that is all that matters. You aren't hurt?"

Miellyn pouted and looked ruefully at her bare bruised feet, patted the
wrinkles in her ragged frock with fastidious fingers. "My poor feet,"
she mourned, "they are black and blue with the cobbles and my hair is
filled with sand and tangles! Toymaker, what way was this to send me to
entice a man? Any man would have come quickly, quickly, if he had seen
me looking lovely, but you--you send me in rags!"

She stamped a small bare foot. She was not merely as young as she had
looked in the street. Though immature and underdeveloped by Terran
standards, she had a fair figure for a Dry-town woman. Her rags fell now
in graceful folds. Her hair was spun black glass, and I--I saw what the
rags and the confusion in the filthy street had kept me from seeing
before.

It was the girl of the spaceport cafe, the girl who had appeared and
vanished in the eerie streets of Canarsa.

Evarin was regarding her with what, in a human, might have been rueful
impatience. He said, "You know you enjoyed yourself, as always, Miellyn.
Run along and make yourself beautiful again, little nuisance."

The girl danced out of the room, and I was just as glad to see her go.
The Toymaker motioned to me.

"This way," he directed, and led me through a different door. The
offstage hammering I had heard, tiny bell tones like a fairy xylophone,
began again as the door opened, and we passed into a workroom which made
me remember nursery tales from a half-forgotten childhood on Terra. For
the workers were tiny, gnarled _trolls_!

They were _chaks_. _Chaks_ from the polar mountains, dwarfed and furred
and half-human, with witchlike faces and great golden eyes, and I had
the curious feeling that if I looked hard enough I would see the little
toy-seller they had hunted out of the Kharsa. I didn't look. I figured I
was in enough trouble already.

Tiny hammers pattered on miniature anvils in a tinkling, jingling chorus
of musical clinks and taps. Golden eyes focused like lenses over winking
jewels and gimcracks. Busy elves. Makers of toys!

Evarin jerked his shoulders with an imperative gesture. I followed him
through a fairy workroom, bu